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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26558182">Back for Good</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/pseuds/Persiflage'>Persiflage</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Holby City</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bernie Wolfe Lives, Canon Schmanon, Cheerfully Ignoring Any and All Canon as the Lord Intended, Cuddling &amp; Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Kissing, Major Character Injury, Nightmares, Post-Canon Fix-It, Sleepy Cuddles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:14:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,425</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26558182</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/pseuds/Persiflage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Canon fix-it fic: Bernie Wolfe lives, but she's going to need a lot of time to recover from being blown up a second time. Serena Campbell awkwardly steps forward.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>96</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Back for Good</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortytworedvines/gifts">fortytworedvines</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It was RedVines' birthday yesterday, so I offered to write her something by way of celebration. She requested something 'short and fluffy'. I *might* have fallen down a bit on the fluffiness! Sorry, Vines!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Serena sighs softly as Bernie shifts slightly against her, her blonde head tucked almost under Serena’s chin. The trauma surgeon is fast asleep, her slender body tucked between Serena's and the back of the sofa; while Serena isn't terribly comfortable, the sofa not really being deep enough from front to back for two people to lie comfortably like this, she wouldn't dream of sending Bernie up to bed instead. Not while she’s sleeping so soundly.</p>
<p>She's only just got her back – almost didn't get her back, in fact, owing to the bombs that took out part of the hospital where Bernie had recently begun working and the airport to which she had gone in order to collect the stuff she'd had shipped from Nairobi to Mogadishu. For the better part of a month everyone had believed Lieutenant Colonel Berenice Wolfe had been killed in the attack. She had, in actual fact, been pulled out of the rubble on the third day following the attack, but she'd been unconscious, and then when she'd woken up, she had been suffering from temporary amnesia and hadn't even known her own name. Even after her memory started to return, she'd remembered Serena's name, that she was a trauma surgeon, and that she had two children, one of whom was named Charlie, but Berenice Griselda Wolfe had eluded her. </p>
<p>The memory loss wasn’t, in fact, the worst of Bernie's injuries: both her legs had been partially crushed and temporarily paralysed by the rubble that had fallen on them; she'd cracked two ribs; and she had hurt her back. By the time Bernie had remembered who she was, she had already been in the hospital for a week and it had taken her almost three more weeks for her to recover sufficiently to be allowed to fly anywhere, but she’d had nowhere to go, aside from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Birmingham, where there’s a Ministry of Defence Hospital Unit for treating operational casualties. Bernie had been flown there for a final assessment before being discharged into civilian life for the final time.</p>
<p>Unknown to Bernie, while her final assessments were being carried out, her CO had rung Serena Campbell and asked if she could help Bernie out until she was more fully recovered and didn't have so many blank patches in her memory. He had explained to Serena that Bernie had remembered her name before her own, and that she had even, for a few days, repeatedly referred to Serena as her wife.</p>
<p>Serena, once she was over her shock at hearing Bernie wasn’t dead, had agreed with alacrity to his request, as long as Bernie herself wanted to come. So, a few days later the trauma surgeon had been driven down to Holby from Birmingham to settle into Serena’s home. </p>
<p>Things had been a little uneasy for the first few hours - Bernie, it turned out, still remembered Serena breaking up with her, despite everything else she couldn’t recall.</p>
<p>“I didn’t mention it to the Brigadier,” she’d told Serena, “because I knew how urgently he wanted me out of his hair. Not that I could blame him. I’m no use to the Army now and their valuable resources should be kept for those men and women on active duty.”</p>
<p>“I’ll understand if you don’t want to stay with me,” Serena had said. “If you prefer to leave once you’ve found your feet, then you’re not obliged to stay.”</p>
<p>Bernie had given her a long look, then, before asking, “Wouldn’t you rather I left? Please, Serena, tell me honestly.”</p>
<p>“No,” Serena had said immediately. “No, I wouldn’t. In the nine months since I sent you away, I’ve regretted it intensely every day. And when they sent Captain Dawson to tell us you’d died –” She’d swallowed. “It wasn’t quite as bad as when I lost Elinor, but I was in a very bad way for a few days.” She’d reached out and clasped Bernie’s hands between her own. “Please stay, Bernie. For as long as you want.”</p>
<p>That had been four days ago and while things are still a little uneasy between them on occasion, for the most part they are back to their usual easy friendship, albeit tinged with regret on Serena’s part. She can’t help thinking that if she hadn’t sent Bernie away on the day of Jason’s wedding, she wouldn’t now be recovering from being blown up for a second time. </p>
<p>So she puts up with the slight discomfort of having a certain lanky blonde trauma surgeon fall asleep on her when they’d been settled on the sofa watching <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> yet again, manoeuvring them around until they’re stretched out along the length of the sofa. And when Bernie starts having a nightmare, as she’s done every day since her return and had done while in hospital, she’d explained, Serena gently shakes her shoulder, calling her name in a tone that she knows is far too tender for the current state of their relationship.</p>
<p>Bernie wakes with a loud cry of anguish, then lies limply against Serena, her body shaking with tremors and her breathing ragged.</p>
<p>“C’mon, love, let’s get you up to bed,” Serena suggests, carding her fingers through Bernie’s dishevelled hair. </p>
<p>“I think I’d rather stay up,” Bernie says, her husky voice filling Serena with a longing she ruthlessly suppresses. “I don’t want to risk a return to that nightmare.”</p>
<p>“Would it - that is, do you think -” Serena huffs in frustration as she tries to find the words to make her suggestion. </p>
<p>Bernie lifts her head to look at her, then struggles to sit up, and Serena shifts to help her. “What are you trying to ask, Serena?”</p>
<p>“Do you remember when I had nightmares after – after losing Elinor?”</p>
<p>“Of course,” Bernie says, her tone implying she hasn’t forgotten one moment of their time together – which Serena would find interesting given the number of gaps that still remain in the blonde’s memory, but she’s too wrapped up in what she wants to say to think about that for the moment.</p>
<p>“I still had them, even when we were in France,” Serena continues. “But you always helped me.”</p>
<p>“Of course I did. I love you, Serena.”</p>
<p>She bites her lip at that present tense. “I’m just wondering if it would help you to share a bed with me in the same way that it helped me. I felt safe, having you next to me, and it made the nightmares a bit less awful.”</p>
<p>“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” Bernie says immediately.</p>
<p>“Well, you don’t have to ask if I offer,” Serena says. “Obviously, don’t say yes if it’s going to make you uncomfortable. But if you think it would help, then you’d be very welcome to share.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know if it would help,” Bernie says slowly. “But if it wouldn’t make you uncomfortable, I’d like to accept your offer.”</p>
<p>“That’s settled, then.” She gets to her feet, then holds out her hands and helps Bernie up off the sofa. She pulls a little too hard and the blonde overbalances and falls against her, and Serena immediately wraps her arms around her. “You okay?” she asks in a murmur.</p>
<p>“Very okay,” Bernie murmurs back. “I’ve missed you, Campbell.”</p>
<p>“Missed you, too, soldier. I wish I hadn’t sent you away. If I hadn’t sent you away, you wouldn’t have been nearly killed again.”</p>
<p>“Shh. That’s water under the bridge, now. Least said, soonest mended.” Bernie pulls back a little and looks her in the eyes, and Serena sees the sincerity in her eyes. There’s something else in Bernie’s eyes, too, something which makes her breath hitch, then makes her moan when a pair of soft, warm lips press against her own.</p>
<p>A hand moves to cup the back of her neck and head, and lips press rather more firmly against her own, and Serena can’t help opening her mouth to Bernie’s.</p>
<p>Eventually the need to catch their breath properly becomes overpowering and they ease themselves apart.</p>
<p>“C’mon, love, let’s get you to bed,” Serena says.</p>
<p>“I think I’d like that,” Bernie says with a shy smile gracing her lips.</p>
<p>“There’ll be no funny stuff, though,” Serena says in a warning tone.</p>
<p>Bernie huffs a laugh. “I’m not capable of funny stuff, as you phrase it. But you should know that when I am, I intend to make up for lost time.”</p>
<p>Serena smirks. “I’m game, Wolfe.”</p>
<p>Bernie’s grin is so wide that Serena can’t help grinning too. </p>
<p>Berenice Wolfe is back and this time she’s staying.</p>
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